“This is a strange world we live in. For the overwhelming majority, the coronavirus and the future of the economy constitute the central problems of the day. There will always be exceptions, though this exception does not prove any rule whatsoever. If anything, this exception erodes the rules of logic
“In the last 30 years there has really been an extraordinary centralisation of administrative processes in the United Kingdom. Scotland is obviously separate politically rather than just administratively. Northern Ireland too, Wales to a lesser extent. There is a concentration of power, and with power prestige, in London.” Let me
1 History, as is so often repeated, is generally written by the victors. Sometimes, though, the victors are defeated and the suppressed voices of those the victors had intended to cast on the scrapheap of history are heard again. This does not mean the rewriting of the past, an exercise
“The European Parliament has decided, Hungary has been referred to Council under Article 7 of the TEU and the left is celebrating. We can leave to one side the questions over the voting procedure, given that politically the weight of the voting is what counts. The joy unconfined on the
Many years ago, in 1954, György Lukács published one of his largely unread masterpieces with the title Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, The Destruction of Reason, (Az ész trónfosztása, “the dethroning of reason” in Hungarian). I find a certain sad irony here in that the abandonment of reason by the left,
Let us assume that an alien, from Betelgeuse say, comes down to Earth to see how things are done there. He (she, it, ze, zo, zhe, zho whatever?) would find it difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the European Union is in serious trouble and, equally, that those
Simon Winder, Danubia: a Personal History of Habsburg Europe, Picador, 2013* This book, though not without virtues, illustrates the perils of popular history. The book is about the Habsburg past, yet far too often Winder has no convincing grasp of what he is dealing with. It is written in a light, jokey style which sometimes works, sometimes jars. Musil gets a mention, but
Looking back at the past year, there is little doubt that the EU has changed. There has been a redistribution of power and the complex array of different EU institutions are involved in a political contest. The outcome and the consequences of the contest will certainly produce a different kind
For a centre-right party, for any political party really, to win a democratic election by a two-thirds majority is rare enough (as in 2010). To repeat the experience is unprecedented. One can well imagine the Fidesz-haters – and their number is legion – muttering into their bowls of gruel about
Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum. (“The fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing” was popularised by Isaiah Berlin, who had taken the saying from Archilocus, the classical Greek poet. It implies that there are two types of individuals, foxes, who seek knowledge in a variety
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